Luca Daze
by Megami Mizuno
Summary: This is the story of our favorite space-case computer genius, Luca Angelloni. A slice of life tale, telling of the times before the vajra, when Skull Squadron still had Guilliam, back before they were flying the brand new VF-25. A prequel to Frontier.


**Author's Note:**

**Alright! This is my first fanfiction here, and I hope you'll like. It's just a very simply story I threw together, so I could have a long term project to be working on. Since Luca didn't get very much coverage in the actual story, I've decided that it's about time that he got his own time in the spotlight. There wasn't much on his background, so I've elaborated on it within the bounds of what's been mentioned about it. So, since his siblings will be appearing as new characters, I'll include a profile with each chapter to help you get to know them better. ^^ Please, read, review and go ahead and give me your own outlooks on what you think Luca's background is. Oh, this takes place before the beginning of Macross Frontier by about a year, so Luca is in third year middle school and Gilliam is still alive. I thought he deserved a little background, too.**

Luca sat sulking over the body of a new-model ghost drone, poking away at its insides with a cordless sautring iron—yet another prototype invention from his father's company. Amazingly enough, the tool worked quite efficiently with its independent heat source and would probably be ready for mass production by the end of the month. But playing with ghost drones and new electronic tools wasn't what he'd been sent to the hangers of the SMS fleet for. He'd been _sent_ to work on the new reconnaissance technologies for the RVF-24 in expectation of the development of the VF-25. The VF-25 would be the next prototype sent exclusively to SMS for testing seeing as the VF-24 appeared to be a failure, and would be a serious step forward in the world of variable fighters. For this reason, he'd been tacked on as the fourth member of one of the squadrons, so he could do hands-on tests on the VF-24 to gather data for the development of the VF-25's rotodome and computer systems. Except for the suatering iron he was working with, he hadn't touched a single prototype since he'd stepped foot in the hanger. The captain of the squadron was too busy making a fuss that it was "too dangerous to have a kid working with them". Luca's insistence that he was fourteen and not twelve didn't seem to make a single difference to the scruffy man.

"Still working, kid?" a jovial voice called out from behind the small boy, making him jump a little. Turning his head, he was just in time to spot a young looking man crouch down beside him. If he remembered right, this baldie was vice-captain William Guilliam—yet another adult that thought kids were nothing but a liability.

Turning back to what he was working on, Luca let out an exasperated sigh, "I don't see how I can still be working if I wasn't working in the first place. And don't treat me like a kid."

"But aren't yo—" Gilliam started, until he the furious clench of the dark boy's jaw. Choosing his words a little more carefully, he started again, "A-anyways, I just wanted to say that Captain isn't as much of a hard—a stiff as he appears. He's just worried you'll get hurt."

Luca closed his eyes, clenched his teeth and took his good sweet time counting to ten. Nothing would change if he got mad, so the only other option was to calm down and take things one step at a time. Still, it frustrated him quite a bit to be treated like a child so often. To say he was a genius in the field of electronics wouldn't be tooting his own horn, it'd just be a statement of truth. He'd been fixing computers at home since he was little, and had been one of the main members on the team that developed the PAL—an alarm clock with limited self intelligence that organized a person's schedule and decided when to wake them up in the morning. Most of the progress in the AI systems used for modern ghost drones was also his doing, as well as a dozen other gizmos and gadgets. There was a reason that, out of all his intelligent brothers, his father had chosen him as his successor. But, of course, most people just assumed he was an incapable brat that only had been pegged as the successor for LAI because he was his father's favorite. This squadron's captain was just another case of that misconception.

"_It's not their fault; Anyone would have made that assumption,"_ Luca reminded himself before opening his eyes again. Guilliam had shifted into a slightly more comfortable crouch and was kind of eyeing Luca with… concern? The little redhead had never been good at guessing other people's feelings, but he was quite sure that his reaction had confused the man.

"Are you-"

"I'm fine." Luca interrupt, rubbing his temples in frustration, unknowingly leaving little smears of grime from the casing of the drone on the sides of his head, "I might not be a fighter pilot, but I can fend for myself. There's more ways to fight than with heavy artillery."

"Good, because they're stripping the guns off your Valkyrie as we speak," a gruff voice stated from behind the two. Not caring enough to turn around, Luca opted to settle for tilting his head back until he could get a view of who was behind him. What he saw was the upside down face of a very angry—and very scruffy—looking man the boy quickly identified as the captain of the squadron he'd been placed in. Still, for the life of him, Luca couldn't remember the man's name. It was something that sounded Chinese, something like the Wizard of Oz, something—but Luca didn't have anymore time to think about it before the man's statement clicked in his head, absolutely derailing his train of thought. Scruffy had said _your_ VF—he was getting a plane, which meant he was in the squadron.

"Hear that kid," Guillam said with a grin, ruffling the boy's curly mess of hair, "That means you're in. Just make sure you don't get in my way."

"Yeah yeah," Luca replied, flattening his hair out carefully.

"I expect to see you here tomorrow, got it?" Scruffy boomed out, glaring down at Luca, "If you're even a second late, you're out. For now, go home. Little boys should be in bed already."

"Who're you calling-" Luca started, but he quickly shut his mouth when he realized that Ozma was still glaring down at him, probably waiting for the boy to slip up and say something rude so he could kick him out. It was obvious this guy didn't want him in his squadron, but Luca really had no choice; it wasn't like any other squadrons had room for another member at the time, so he'd just have to deal with this man until there was an opening. "Yes sir, captain; I'll make sure to be on time."

For a moment, it looked like his new captain was about to flip his shit at Luca's reaction, but Guilliam quickly jumped up to calm the other man down a bit, "Just give him a chance Ozma, alright? You said it yourself, the kid's Valkyrie is nerfed; even if he messes up, what's the worst he can do?"

"One mistake and he's gone," Ozma spat out, giving Luca a glare before stomping off.

With a sigh, Guilliam gave his parting words as well before heading off after Ozma, "You better not mess this up, kid."

"I haven't even done anything yet!" Luca protested, but it was in vain; the two senior members of his squadron had already disappeared off into the hanger.

"Luca, what the crap are you doing?"

This statement found Luca in the basement of his rather sizable home, perched on a stool at a workbench. Across were strewn pieces and parts, small tools, big tools, blue prints—all sorts of odds and ends in a seemingly nonexistent pattern. In the middle of this mess, where Luca's small hands were currently at work, was the ghost drone he'd been playing with earlier in the day. It was nearly completely by that point, but that was mostly due to the fact that he'd been working long into the night to get it finished by the next day.

Looking up from the chaos that was his work area, Luca spotted a tall feminine figure by the bottom of the stairs. He couldn't see much beyond the halo of light his halogen lamp cast, but he already knew who was there. After all, the only person in the household that used that sort of language was his older sister: law student and freeloader Noemi Angelloni, his one and only sister.

"Working," he answered, though the second half of the word was almost lost in his yawn. Rubbing his eyes, Luca wondered just when he'd begun getting tired.

"You're kidding, right?" the redheaded questioned her brother, folding her arms across her chest. As his eyes adjusted a little to the light surrounding his work bench, Luca could see that she was in her pajamas with a bathrobe thrown lazily over it all. Obviously, some noise he'd made while working had woken his older sister up, and she didn't sound pleased in the slightest at his excuse.

"It's a ghost drone; you know, like AI and stuff," he half-heartedly explained, turning to face his work again. She'd always been into law and humanities, so he didn't really expect her to get it, so he was surprised when she response with a bitter "well, yeah". Apparently, she wasn't one to be chased off with a half-hearted explanation.

"Captain's a jerk, so I'm going to prove to him that I'm useful with this," he explained, already back to working on the ghost drone. He could hear Noemi moving closer across the cement floor, but she didn't seem to be in any particular hurry.

"And just how do you plan to prove anything with… that?"

"Magic."

"…What? I knew all this computer stuff would make you funny in the head."

"I'm not funny in the head!" Luca retorted, turning to face his sister, only to meet with the front of her bathrobe.

"Any idiot who stays up past midnight working on a _robot_ with no clear intentions of what they'll even be using it for is obviously an idiot," she explained in monotone, putting one hand firmly on the top of his head and turning him to face his workbench again, "Hurry up and finish so we can both go to bed, alright?"

Grumbling to himself, Luca went back to work with the aid of a grudging and grumpy Noemi. It wasn't true in the least that the boy had no idea what he was going to do with the drone when he was finished. He merely hadn't wanted to explain the whole days incident to his older sister, since she had the most curious ways of showing her displeasure—ways he didn't want to discover on the off-chance she ran into his captain. The drone was to be the first step in getting his captain to stop looking at him like useless baggage that would only get itself hurt. He might be stuck flying a recon specific Valkyrie with no weapons to speak of, but that didn't mean he would be defenseless. In the case of a normal RVF-24, the rotodome would consume most of the processing power of the ships computers. However, _his_ RVF-24 would be equipped with a rotodome fit for the more efficient VF-25, since that's what he'd been put in the squadron to run tests on. That meant it was more efficient and would take up much less processing power on the computers. With a little work and reprogramming, he could easily modify his variable fighter to run multiple ghost drones all while he sat in the cockpit, running whatever tests or electronic interference he needed to be running. Now _that_ was what he called multi-tasking.

"All set." He informed his sister as he tightened the last screw into place. Amongst the mess on his desk was one complete ghost drone, just waiting to be put into use. Add to that the two he'd seen in the hanger on his way out, and suddenly he had an army of three. On his face was a tired, but satisfied grin; his Captain wouldn't believe his eyes when he saw just what Luca could do with a couple spare parts and some free time.

**Alright! Here's the first profile. It's for Luca's older sister.**

**Name: Noemi Angelloni**

**Hair & Eyes: Red headed with olive colored eyes**

**Relation: Older sister; only daughter of the Angelloni family**

**Age: 21**

**Status: An undergraduate student studying law; engaged to be married**

**Personality: Noemi usually has a neutral expression, and doesn't show much emotion on the outside. She can be rather critical and a little rough with her younger brothers and doesn't take any sass from them. To others, she appears very refined and mature, though she secretly has a passion for old music, particularly Fire Bomber!**


End file.
